Notes and Editorial Reviews

Richard Lester studied harpsichord with GeorgeRead more Malcolm and piano with Bernard Roberts. It was while taking master classes at the Dartington Summer School that he met Fernando Valenti, who stimulated an interest in Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard music. Since then he has gone on to a career as a successful keyboardist, teacher, public performer, and festival organizer. He is not known for an extensive career inside a recording studio, however, which makes the appearance of this Scarlatti collection—all the Kirkpatrick-cataloged sonatas, along with other items whose authenticity has been confirmed since, on 38 CDs—a dramatic near-debut that would be difficult to equal. (Near-debut, because Lester is credited with having recorded an out-of-print album of Scarlatti several years ago.) Of the two volumes I’ve received thus far for review, the earliest sessions were put to bed in 2001, while the latest were in 2004.

One point that will either impress you or put you off the series from the start is Lester’s employment of rhythmic flexibility in his readings. This is not done to excess, in my opinion, but the fact that it’s done at all will likely surprise many Scarlatti fanciers used to bedrock rhythms in most pieces in other readings, including those of Gilbert Roland (Kingdom) and Pieter-Jan Belder (Brilliant Classics). Lester doesn’t use this approach in every sonata; K 289 in G only employs it on the da capo phrase, while the regular dance of K 269 in A and a motoric piece like the vivo K 222 in A don’t use it, at all. But beyond slow movements where it might reasonably be expected, this flexibility can also be heard as an expressive device in phrase endings, such as K 285 in A, or in the holds used to maintain harmonic suspension in the middle of phrases in K 230 in C Minor, or in K 186 in F Minor.

No justification for this is offered in the relatively short notes that accompany each of these volumes. As he does divide many of the sonatas into pieces that imitate either instrumental (guitar, castanets, trumpets, etc) or vocal styles, it is probable Lester sees this as reflecting folk-based quasi-improvisatory techniques that have been written about for hundreds of years. This would tie in with his selective addition of turns, appoggiaturas, etc, to a number of sonatas, as when he remarks in his liner notes that K 206 in E allows “opportunities for the type of vocal ornamentation added by cante singers.” The result is less strictly played than in other recordings that emphasize Scarlatti’s debt to the Italians, but are of at least equal validity, and accomplished with discerning taste.

Technically, Lester is on top of it all, capable of absolutely even runs, repeated figurations, crossed hands, wide leaps, cross accents, etc: the entire arsenal of Baroque keyboard virtuosity. He deploys a diversity of tempos according to the scores’ indications, which means that many allegro sonatas don’t go quite as quickly as we are wont to hear them in some other, rather hectic readings. (He reserves that treatment for the pieces marked vivo.) He isn’t afraid of slow tempos, either, and his performances of andante movements are broad without being interminably slow. Pieces with multiple tempo markings, such as K 176 in D Minor (cantabile-allegressimo), have each section carefully defined for dramatic effect. Indeed, drama is more of a component of Lester’s Scarlatti than in other recent versions I’ve heard. Given the strong relationship he identifies in detail between these pieces and selected types of folk music, it’s not surprising that differences of tempo, rhythm, register, and dissonance figure heavily into his traversal.

A variety of instruments are to be used in this series, including, if an advertisement for another volume is correct, a fortepiano. However, the two sets I’ve thus far received mostly employed a pair of harpsichords: a Michael Cole reproduction of a José Joachim Antunes (Lisbon, 1785) and a 1976 Stephen Wessel (that was discovered in a barn in Eastcote). The Cole/Antunes is a sweet thing with a broad expressive range and surprising depth in the bass; the Wessel, more brilliant and Italianate. A couple of selections, K 287 and K 288, marked “per organo da camera con due tastatura flautato e trombone,” are performed on a 1984 organ in All Saints Church, Friern Barnet. Lester calls the instrument “delightful,” and I’m inclined to agree with him. It has the wonderful brass stops of surviving Spanish Baroque instruments, with an intimacy more common to provincial Italian organs. The engineering has a small room ambience (save in the case of the organ, obviously) that brings warmth to instruments without blurring attacks.

I’ve only two serious criticisms of this series. The first I’ve already mentioned: the short (though scholarly) liner notes, relative to the wealth and worth of material presented here. The second is the structurally disaster-prone six-CD jewel boxes, with hinges that all too frequently snap under the weight of a pair of CDs. Neither is sufficient to curtail my enjoyment of these volumes of chronologically early Scarlatti sonatas, nor the likely entry of this series in my next Want List.